Lee.org

If you’d still like to get email notifications from me, please sign up again in the upper right corner of my site at Lee.org. I had gotten so many fake email subscribers that I’m going to wipe the whole list and start over.

I just turned email notifications on today after some 7 months. You can go back to the site or the archives to catch up. It took me a while to get around to fixing it.

I love and hate how new TV shows come out a full season at a time now. It’s nice that it’s all “just there” to watch. But there’s a lack of excitement and discussion about what’s going to happen next. Would you like to watch some shows together… SLOWLY?

This was brought to a head for me when I saw episode  4 of The Witcher the other night. I thought “Wow, that was awesome! I want to talk to somebody ab…. wait. Most likely any of my friends have either seen the whole season already or they haven’t seen the show at all.”

Thoughts?

After several years, I’ve fixed the Archives page. You can now see a list of all the posts on the site. You can find the link in the sidebar and here.

I’m glad to have found the Simple Yearly Archive plugin by Oliver Schlöbe!

Abigail went back to preschool this week. The school is doing a lot to minimize the spread of Coronavirus. This is her last 5 weeks of preschool and Step One School has been amazing to promote her growth! I am truly bothered that the pandemic robbed Abigail of part of this experience. At every pick-up, I was learning more about how to become a better pediatric occupational therapist and dad!

Megan and I are going back to work in what will assuredly be a “complex” working environment in about a month in the school, so we welcome the quiet prep time. To give you a taste, here’s the update from her main teacher on the first day back:

Dear Room 1 Families,

We are in the midsts of having such an amazing day back at school. It has been so wonderful to feel the love, joy, and energy of the kids being back.

Our day started at circle, where they met our pet “Queenie”. Ask your child if they can remember what kind of snake she is. She was also feeling shy and nervous, which helped some kids feel better. Here is a picture from circle. We went over some of the new procedures. Ask them if they can remember some of them, like where do they put their toy when they are done or what airplane arms mean.

After circle the kids were so busy playing around the room. Some of the activities were:

• Making placemats
• Playing with their own ball of play dough
• Building with Magnatiles
• Playing in the playhouse
• Playing with the trains
• Listening to stories
• Swinging on the rope ladder
• Jumping onto the pillows
• Painting
• Playing at the water table
• Building on existing friendships and making new ones

After playing inside we headed up to the deck for snack. Here is a picture from snack time.

After snack was our first outside time. Some of the activities outside were:

• Washing babies in the water table
• Swinging on the swing
• Playing on the monkey bars
• Riding the bikes and scooters
• Playing under the gatehouse
• Playing in the waterfall (ask your child if they were part of the big leaf removal at the waterfall)

After our outside time we were back to the deck for lunch and to listen to a story. The kids had fun using their placemat that they had made in the morning. After lunch is another outside time and nap time for a few (more rolling around than napping so far). That’s a summary of our day so far.

A few reminders:

• Please remember to sunscreen your child in the morning. We are doing it when we first come out.
• Please send your child with a hat. We have the sun shades around the yard but a hat could help.
• Check in with your child about how they felt about being at school. It’s a big change for all of us.

We are so excited to have your child in our class and look forward to all that is yet to come. Please email us (please cc all of the teachers) if you have any questions.

Peace,

Steve, Raquel, and Leticia

Well, actually, it is a poke in the eye, but that’s ok! I’ve been getting monthly treatments for macular edema caused by CRVO. I keep reminding myself that the technology to repair this problem has only existed for about 20 years. The previous treatment, with steroids, wasn’t very effective, and before that, I simply would have gone blind in that eye.

The treatment is getting a few needles in the eye. It’s oddly exhausting for how little actual pain is involved but I’m right as rain the next day.

Happily, my treatments are very successful. My next appointment is 5 weeks away instead of the previous 4 weeks. In a few months, the treatments will hopefully not be needed any more :-)

(Previously)

My school district is planning on starting with a mostly-distance-learning program in August. The final plan will be in place July 20th.

Here are some relevant screenshots from the meeting. The plan is to go with “option 4”: https://docs.google.com/…/19ATiGmBWD3KHwNOjUg9_DH2be5…/edit…

If you want to watch the most “important” bits of the meeting, I’d start watching the video at about the 51 minute mark.. Here’s a link: https://youtu.be/U2FUA_yAQXM?t=3063

Or watch the whole meeting on Facebook… https://www.facebook.com/WestContraCostaSchools/videos/898840930526647/

Window-Swap.com

Visit quiet places during the pandemic.

and in case it wasn’t clear…

I work in elementary schools as an occupational therapist. My district just came out with a tentative plan to start the year nearly fully online with the hope of transitioning to in-person as time goes by. In the superintendent’s letter he mentions, “the teacher… can deliver instruction either from home or in a classroom with a limited number of high-need students.”

I work with many high-need students. So… … we’ll see how it goes! I have trust in my district. And I’m nervous. We’ll see how it goes!

Encouraging COVID news? I was chatting with Zee and wrote
…it’s encouraging to see that while the confirmed case rate in the US is climbing (https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/?location=Canada&location=US), the death rate in the US is declining (https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/?data=deaths&location=Canada&location=US) One idea is that since death occurs about 3 weeks after contracting the virus, the death-rate should follow the case-rate after about a 3 week delay. That doesn’t seem to be happening. I’m not sure why. What does this data mean?